I’ve been there.

It was 2001. Portal Games had folded. I had no money. My bank accounts were frozen. Debt collectors were knocking. I was done.

I posted a short message in the Polish RPG discussion group—and then I shut myself off. All my dreams had shattered. I sat in front of the TV, numb. These were some of the grimmest weeks of my life.

I blame Martin Wallace. I blame Vital Lacerda. And yes, I’ll take some of the blame myself.

Martin designed Brass — an economic game about some old stuff like the coal industry. Vital is incredibly talented, but instead of creating a brilliant game about international trade, he made Kanban, a game about cars. And me? I designed an economic simulation of the fashion industry.

We could have saved the whole thing, but we chose coal, cars, and fashion instead. And so here we are — Trump reactivates coal mines in the US, he buys himself a new Tesla, and wears the most fashionable golf outfits the world has ever seen. I saw pics — he has the best trousers any other president ever had.

It’s all happening because of Wallace, Lacerda, and Trzewiczek.

And yes, I know you might doubt if anyone at the White House plays board games at all. You might even want to comfort me and say, “Ignacy, it’s not your fault.”

Allow me to disagree. They love to play some games. 

He for sure loves Scrabble. Did you know you can get 12 points for a good old-fashioned word like „groceries”? And he knows many words, the best words, he can even create new ones. He is great at Scrabble, he really is. 

Diplomacy taught him how to negotiate with world leaders. And I tell you this, if you are a very stable genius, you will easily win this game. You make the dumbest offers, and your friends at some point will agree — just keep repeating them over and over.  It’s called consequence, baby!

And then there is, of course, the one and only — Monopoly! A board game with only one winning strategy — screw everybody else and get rich by taking their money. His Fav Game of All Time.

Trust me, they are playing board games. Unfortunately, not the right ones.

So, I’m going to whine. Brew yourself a cup of coffee, get comfortable, and let’s begin. The life of a board game publisher is unfair. A comic book publisher, a book publisher, or even a YouTuber—they all have it easier. How they have it easier? When it comes to covers. Yes, I’m whinening about covers.

Officially, my job title is „board game publisher,” but those of you who know me well are aware that I’ve spent the last decade primarily as the head of the marketing department. In that department, everything revolved around A/B testing, analyzing reactions, and doing experiments. It was all about running three ads and seeing which performed better. About uploading a video to YouTube, then changing the thumbnail after two days to see if it improved click-through rates. About sending out newsletters with two different subject lines to see which achieved a higher open rate.

When we were kids, it was different. We just played. A child is like a cat; they don’t understand the concept of time, living in the present with the blissful belief that things will always be the same. So, we played RPGs twice a week, after school, like kids do—a never-ending campaign, without a beginning or an end, without a story arc, just playing for the sake of it.

Then you go to college, thinking you’re growing up, getting smarter, having a girlfriend, being able to drink beer. But in reality, you’re still like that cat, unaware of time, unaware that it’s all about to end—that the weekly gaming with friends, that carefree fun without a plan, without a beginning or end, will eventually have a finish line. Life comes along, with work and kids, and you truly grow up, only then understanding what time really means.

And so it happens, you’re an adult. Life pulls you into its gears. You want to play, but there’s no time. You want to play, but maybe you’ll manage to pull off a one-shot session here and there, a hastily organized gathering, only to have it fall apart after two months of planning because one person can’t make it, and another just doesn’t want to. You’re an adult now. There’s no time for a never-ending campaign, no weekly D&D sessions without a goal. There’s no more playing like a cat, like a kid, no more playing for the sake of it.

I’m looking at the requirements for the first scenario. The table represents a settlement—it requires six buildings and some pens or an orchard. On top of that, I need six Giant Rat models and at least eight Zombie models. All right, I think. I’ve been into miniature gaming since 1994. This can be done.

I grab the Zombie miniatures from my copy of Zombicide and paint them quickly—one Saturday, and I have the complete set. Then I look into in the Rat models – I find some rats in one of the Zombicide expansions. I didn’t have the expansion, but I went to the company warehouse and dug around a bit. Perks of being the boss at a game company. The Rats were painted in about an hour, and after one diligently spent Saturday, I was ready with all the enemy models.

The terrain was a bit more work. On Sunday, I built and painted two huts. They turned out much worse than I had hoped, so I didn’t even try making a third one—too embarrassing. Instead, I bought a ready-made STL file and printed two more huts on Monday with a 3D printer. These looked like they had come straight from The Lord of the Rings movies. The next weekend, I painted them, and I was ready with the terrain.

Then my party, my Rangers! I had already bought the models, so all I had to do was paint them. They deserved more than a speedpaint job; after all, it’s Aragorn, Gimli, and Éowyn models, so I had to put in the effort. Seven models, two weekends of work, and they turned out amazing.

A month flew by, but I was finally ready. After four weekends of intense preparation, gluing, building, and painting, I could finally play. I grabbed the rulebook, set up the scenario, picked up the dice, and embarked on an epic defense of the settlement.

After 45 minutes, I won. I calculated the Experience Points and turned the page to the next scenario. This time, I need eight Giant Spiders and six cocoons from which they’ll emerge. The terrain setup represents a forest, so I also need about 20 trees…

***

Rangers of Shadow Deep is a narrative miniature game. Each battle is a separate scenario, with different terrain setups, different enemies, and a brand new part of the Shadow Deep story. Each battle means several weekends of preparing new terrain elements and enemy models. Each battle is then about an hour of gameplay.

It’s completely absurd. Return On Investment, Return of Game Time versus the Preparation Time really is beyond absurd.

I tell you a secret: I love it!

Let me explain.

***

When you play at a gaming club, where the shelves are packed with terrain built over the years, and club members have hordes of skeletons, zombies, spiders, rats, and whatever else you might need, Rangers of Shadow Deep is just another skirmish game. You open the scenario, grab the terrain from the shelves, borrow models from your friends, and defend the Shadow Deep from the Darkness.

But when you’re in this hobby alone, when you have to handle the extensive list of preparations, when you’re the one who is building the terrain and finding enemy models, only then does Rangers of Shadow Deep reveal its true secret. And what is that secret?

Rangers of Shadow Deep is an incredibly simple skirmish game, a game with rules that could be written in 10 minutes on a folded sheet of A4 paper—just roll a d20 and see if you rolled higher than the attacking Zombie. Let’s be frank, this game isn’t really about battles and dice rolling. Rangers of Shadow Deep is about the love of the hobby. It’s about the preparations for the game, about building terrain, finding and painting the right monster models, naming your party of Rangers, and assigning them skills that probably won’t even come into play. Rangers of Shadow Deep is a game about those weeks of preparation and the excitement for the upcoming session.

And the gameplay itself? It doesn’t quite compare to the main fun: roll a few d20s, defeat some Zombies, and in an hour, you can return to what’s best—the preparations. First, allocate Experience Points for your Rangers, then plan new terrain, then paint new enemy models. More weekends of fun ahead…